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  "Call an ambulance! Someone call a fucking ambulance!"

  She was barely breathing. Mack felt like his heart was breaking. Tears streamed down his face. Jason, Chris, Norm, Breezy, Alexis, Bilal, and a dozen other punks stared at him as he raced through the club with Miranda's limp body in his arms. None of them had ever seen Mack cry before.

  Mack could not remember the last time he had. There was no doubt in his mind now that he was in love with Miranda. He only hoped that she would live.

  Chapter 1

  South Street, 12:07 am, two weeks later

  It was midnight on South Street. Locals, tourists, suburbanites, thugs of every race, would-be-mafioso, hippies, goths, punks, and skinheads crowded the snow-covered streets. Storefront windows featuring leather-clad manikins in leashes and handcuffs, trenchcoats and miniskirts, sporting chainsaws and machetes, were mixed with the normal ice cream and Italian water-ice shops and landmark cheese steak hoagie restaurants. The sidewalks were packed with people, shopping, eating, partying, trying to hook up or just hanging out. It looked more like a crowded nightclub than a city street.

  The police had begun closing the street to vehicles after ten pm on weekends. There were so many people that cars would have been unable to get through even if the streets had been open. Police patrolled the crowds, though they seemed to spend more time lounging in the many pizza joints and bars that lined the streets than walking the sidewalks. When they were patrolling, they looked scared. On South Street, riots were known to erupt with little provocation. And the Philly PD were frequent casualties.

  South Street, running from Eighth Street to Front Street, was the nearest commercial district to the waterfront. Up until the nineteen seventies brought the city's big push for urban renewal, it was a questionable, counterculture, community populated by an eclectic mix of artists, musicians, criminals, derelicts, prostitutes, tricks and sailors (who were often one and the same) and the tourists who came to the riverfront to listen to live music, shop the odd little shops that sprang up on the street, get drunk at the many bars, and gawk at the freaks and riff-raff. That part hadn't changed much. Then, the stores on South Street were mostly sole proprietorships, quirky knick-knack shops, antique stores, a plethora of bars, bizarre clothing stores, and adult boutiques that catered mostly to strippers, rebellious teenagers, and housewives looking to put a little spice back in the bedroom. In the 1980s, punkrock stores like Skinz and Zipperheads sprang up to replace many of the artsy boutiques, though most of the bars remained and a few new stores like Unique Clothing, Blacks, and Trash & Vaudeville sprang up to replace the ones that left. But slowly, retail chain stores like Tower Records and Foot Locker, which catered primarily to the tourists who flocked to South Street for the notorious nightlife, began to move in and the "neighborhood" community aspect of South Street began to disintegrate.

  The trendier the street became, the angrier Mack and Jason grew. South Street was their home. It wasn't just part of the hardcore scene in Philly. It was the hardcore scene. And now it was slowly being taken over by jocks, tourists, poseurs and fucking skinheads.

  "You're a big, black, faggot!" the kid with the shaved head said, pointing at the large silver hoop earrings in Mack's left ear. He was taller than Mack, but as thin as a junkie, with a weak chin, stooped shoulders and a bowed chest. His eyes swam in his head, unable to fix on anything. He was clearly drunk off his ass.

  "Oh shit," Jason said, cupping a hand over his mouth. He looked as surprised as Mack was. He stared at the kid as if he had lost his mind. When he looked up at Mack, whose mouth had dropped open wide in disbelief before slowly contorting into a snarl, Jason almost appeared afraid. Mack knew better though, Jason loved to see him pulverize assholes, the more brutal the better. He was more than an enabler. Jason was usually the instigator. He treated Mack like an attack dog that he sicked on anyone who threatened or offended him. Mack didn't mind though. Fighting was one of his few talents and like all talents, if you didn't use it, you lost it.

  "What did you just say to me?"

  Someone was about to catch a bad one.

  Mack looked at the kid. He didn't look much like a skinhead. He wore a leather motorcycle jacket and motorcycle boots instead of a bomber jacket and Doc Martens. He looked more like a punk rocker with a shaved head than a white supremacist, definitely not a member of The Unrest, but there was the little matter of the insult. If he wasn't a Nazi skinhead, he sure as shit talked like one.

  "I said, you're a big, black, faggot!"

  They were standing outside South Philly Deli. It was a Philadelphia landmark. The big window with the image of the Liberty Bell wrapped in the American flag, had been seen on South Street for more than twenty years. It was one of the restaurants you had to visit when you came to South Street along with Pat's Steaks and Genarro's Pizza. The restaurant was packed with tourists stuffing their mouths with Italian hoagies, roast beef sandwiches, Ruben's, and turkey hoagies. They all screamed and leapt from their seats when the skinhead's face smashed through the window, shattering it into a thousand jagged shards, many of which lodged in the guy's face. He collapsed onto the sidewalk, yelling and picking glass from his bloody forehead, cheeks, and lips. His face looked like it had been put through a meat-grinder. Large gashes gushed blood and tiny strips of flesh were peeled back revealing the pink flesh beneath.

  Mack ducked into the crowd, wiping his bloody fists on his jeans as he raced down the street with Jason close behind, howling and laughing.

  "Oh my, God! That was AWESOME! You fucked 'im up bad, dude!"

  Mack was quiet, his head swiveled back and forth, shoulders hunched, eyes searching the street, hoping he could get off South Street before the cops arrived. The police in South Philly weren't terribly tenacious. Between the Italian Mafia, the Irish Mob and the Junior Black Mafia, most of them were on the take and on South Street, making an arrest was always dangerous. The cops tried to avoid it at all costs. Unless it was something like murder, if they didn't catch you in the act or in the first two or three hours following the crime, you were home free. But if they did catch you, a serious beating was not unheard of. They wouldn't give a damn about what he'd done to the skinhead, but vandalizing the South Philly Deli window could very well get him a police baton enema.

  They turned the corner onto Third Street. When he looked back, Mack was not surprised to see that no one was chasing them. Once you were off the main street, the neighborhood looked very much as it had thirty years ago, dark and dangerous. After sunset, most people avoided the side streets.

  "Let's go further up South Street where it's not so crowded. We can hang out at the comic store. Chris is working until midnight."

  "It is midnight."

  Jason shrugged.

  "He's probably still there. Dude loves comics. If he didn't work there he'd still be hanging out there all day." Mack nodded.

  "Yeah, okay, but then we need to go back to Third and South. Those chicks from Jersey are still up there and Breezy and Alexis get off work soon."

  "You've got a thing for Alexis don't you?" Jason asked.

  "She's fine, man. But she never looks twice at me. Fuck her."

  "Yeah, fuck that bitch!" He smiled. "The very first chance you get. Fuck her real hard."

  Mack laughed.

  "You're a fool, man."

  A silence fell between them.

  "You been to see Miranda lately?"

  Mack nodded solemnly.

  "Yeah. She's still in a coma but they say her CAT scans look normal. It doesn't look like there's any brain damage. She could come out of it any day."

  "That's good. That's real good."

  Jason was staring at Mack as they walked down the dark street on their way to the comic shop. Steam billowed from the sewers, giving the streets a London fog effect that made Mack think of vampires and Jack the Ripper.

  "You're in love with Miranda ain't you?"

  Mack nodded.

  "Yeah. I think I am."

  "Why did
n't you ever tell her?"

  '"Cause I'm black and she's white and not everyone's cool with that. I'm not even that mildly acceptable light-skinned color like Prince or Michael Jackson. I'm fucking black, black."

  "Man, Miranda's not like that. She's not prejudice or nothin'."

  "I know that. I ain't sayin' she is. Look, people won't say it, especially not to my face, but I know a lot of white chicks, even if they ain't prejudice, just don't find black guys attractive, especially not dark-skinned black guys like me. I just didn't want to hear her say some shit about wanting to be just friends or to find out she really had a crush on you or something. That shit would have fucked me up."

  Jason continued staring at Mack. So long that it became uncomfortable.

  "What, man? Why you staring at me like that?"

  "I didn't know your big ass was so sensitive. When she wakes up, you gotta tell her."

  "Maybe."

  "No, maybe. Tell her!"

  "I don't know. I don't do rejection well."

  "Just tell her, dude. You'll hate yourself if you don't."

  Mack snickered.

  "I've been hating myself for years."

  Chapter 2

  The Broad Street subway station, 4:13 AM

  Bo, Skinner, and Little Davey followed the old black woman across the subway platform. Graffiti marred every visible surface and the smell of urine was almost overpowering. The metal on steel shriek of subway trains traveling distant rails echoed through the station. Foul smelling winds whipped out of the tunnels. Little Davey giggled to himself, laughing at some private joke that only he was privy to, thinking up something gruesome to do to the old woman. Bo and Skinner shared a worried look. It was never good when Davey was in this kind of mood. He had a tendency to take things too far.

  The three of them were dressed identically in white tshirts, green bomber jackets, black Levis cuffed at the bottom, and oxblood Doc Marten combat boots. Little Davey completed the look with red suspenders, a thick leather belt with a chrome swastika belt buckle, and a black bowler hat. If their group could be said to have a leader, it was Little Davey. He wasn't the biggest or the strongest of them, but he was by far the most ruthless and that commanded Bo and Skinner's respect. Either one of them could have kicked Little Davey's ass but he was likely to retaliate by slitting their throats, cutting off their cocks and shoving it into the wound.

  All three had shaved heads. They went to great pains to follow the skinhead aesthetic down to the last detail. Little Davey was clean-shaven while Skinner wore a goatee and Big Bo had a scraggly red beard that made him look like a lumberjack. They were members of a skinhead group from Camden, New Jersey called The Unrest and tonight, they were out to start a war.

  "Hurry up! You want this old bitch to get away?" Little Davey asked.

  "Naw. I'm coming," Bo answered.

  The threesome stumbled across the subway platform. They had been drinking all night and had left Skinner's apartment looking for something to vent their aggression on, which was bad news for anything weak and helpless they happened to stumble upon, like the withered septuagenarian in the ratty gray wool coat, thick black orthopedic shoes and flower print headscarf, all by herself in the middle of the subway platform. It was four o'clock in the morning and she was alone. It was just her and them. The moment they spotted her, they knew they were going to hurt her.

  Bo drained the rest of his beer. Budweiser. A good American Beer. He crushed the can and tossed it onto the subway tracks. The clang of the aluminum can hitting the steel rails echoed, sounding even louder in the stillness of the night. They were almost out of alcohol. They'd spent most of the evening drinking Jack Daniels and Wild Turkey that Skinner's dad had leftover from his New Year's Eve party. They were past buzzed and well into the land of drunk and disorderly. "Feeling ten-feet tall and bulletproof" as Little Davey liked to say. Their courage as well as their rage amplified tenfold by whiskey and beer.

  She's probably on her way to a job that Affirmative Action helped her to get over a better qualified white person, Davey thought, already searching his mind for the proper rationale for the coming violence. He giggled again as he imagined increasingly brutal ways to impress his friends and sate his own need for terror and destruction.

  Beside him, Bo still held the bottle of Wild Turkey clutched by the neck as they walked across the subway platform. The big bearded skinhead took several more swigs of the amber liquid and grimaced in pain as it scalded his throat. Davey knew what the big guy was doing. He was drowning his mind in booze in preparation for the violence he knew what was about to go down. Bo was the type of guy who needed alcohol to dull his normal human tendency toward sympathy and compassion. Little Davey didn't need any such chemical assistance. He had no sympathy or compassion to hinder him.

  "Ease up on the booze. If you pass out we're leaving you here. You're too damn big to carry," Davey said.

  Bo was about 6'3" and every bit of 250lbs. He loved football and had played on teams in elementary school and junior high but had been afraid to go out for the team in high school. It was one of the many things he blamed the black kids at his school for. They had terrorized him into giving up his dream of winning a college scholarship and then playing for Notre Dame or the Texas Longhorns before his ultimate dream of playing for the NFL. Now he was just another dumb redneck with no future, all because he had let those coons intimidate him. Little Davey felt sorry for him. His resentment about his aborted football career had been the thing that Davey used to talk him into joining The Unrest. Skinner had been easier. He was just tired of getting his ass kicked and Davey promised that they would protect him.

  All night they'd been talking about the impending race war. It was inevitable, Little Davey concluded. There was no way to avoid it. And it was all because of desegregation. If it wasn't for desegregation they would not have all wound up at a predominantly black high school getting teased, bullied, and beaten every day. Instead, high school had been hell. And now that they were out of school, it was time for some pay back.

  The old lady, was to be the first casualty of their war against the black race. She was the enemy, part of the race that was stealing jobs from the white man, that was breeding with whites and polluting their pure Aryan blood with their inferior DNA, that was destroying America with their drugs and gangs and criminal behavior. She was part of the race that had taken Bo's lunch every day. Part of the race that had stolen Skinner's sneakers right off his feet and sent him home in bare socks when he'd come to school in a new pair of Air Jordans. The old woman was part of the race that had put Little Davey in the hospital for using the "N-word" when a big black kid named Harold had tried to steal his silver necklace, the one his mother had given him for Christmas. They had to be destroyed for America to survive and return to her former glory and that meant there must be a war, a cleansing by fire. America had to be purged of all the "mud people", the niggers, spics, Jews, and Arabs and all the atheists and homosexuals.

  "Here, little monkey. Come here, little monkey." Little Davey tittered.

  The old lady walked faster, casting worried glances over her shoulder at the group of leering teenaged delinquents. She clutched her pocketbook tight to her chest as she sped up, hurrying down toward the end of the platform, praying to God the train would come before she ran out of places to go. Unfortunately, God didn't hear her. The three skinheads grinned at her as she came to the end of the platform.

  "Where you going, little monkey? Don't you want to play?"

  "You boys stay away from me. I don't want no trouble."

  "Oh but we do, you dirty little ape. We want trouble," Little Davey said as he drew closer to her.

  "I'll call the police!"

  "And how will you do that?" Bo asked. "Ain't no Phones down here."

  "No. It looks to me like it's just you and us. But I'll tell you what, since all you nigger bitches are a bunch of whores anyway. You suck us all off and we won't hurt you. We'll let you go," Little Davey said.
/>   "Awww. That's nasty! I ain't lettin' this wrinkled up old coon suck my dick. She looks like she's a hundred years old!" Skinner said with an expression of revulsion twisting his face. At 17 Skinner was the youngest. He still had another year in high school. He was always the one who tried to chicken out whenever they had anything dangerous or criminal planned though Little Davey knew that Skinner was a sadist. Skinner had confessed to him that he liked to torture cats and had even cut the balls off a stray dog once. Skinner wasn't afraid of violence. He loved it. It was jail that Skinner was afraid of. He was short, almost as short as Little Davey, and he was skinny and wore glasses.

  "If I ever go to jail I'll get raped. Look at me!" Skinner said once when they were talking about kidnapping and killing black kids like The Atlanta Child Murderer.

  "That guy had balls. He had the right idea," Skinner said, "but there's no way I could do that."

  "If you went to prison you'd just hook up with the Aryan Brotherhood. They'd protect you," Little Davey answered, trying to reassure him. The idea of kidnapping and torturing black kids had its appeal and he didn't want to rule it out. Though he wasn't sure how they'd ever get away with something like that. A man could dream though.

  "Yeah, and then you'd be their bitch. At least then you'd be sucking on a white cock instead of a big black one," Bo said and laughed.

  Little Davey smiled. He wasn't letting Skinner chicken out this time.

  "Every woman is beautiful with my dick in her mouth. You just imagine it's somebody else, like Madonna or that chick from Married With Children. It'll be just like jackin' off, only with this old nigger's mouth instead of your hand."

  Bo and Skinner both looked horrified but then they began to warm to the idea. Davey could see it in their eyes and the stupid grins on their faces. He knew Skinner was a virgin and as ugly as this old bitch was, he would have let her wrap her big black monkey lips around his little pecker in an instant. Little Davey looked around the subway station. It was still empty. He unzipped his pants, pulled his cock out and waved it at the old lady. She looked at it in horror as if he had pulled a gun out of his pants.